The Core
Why We Are Here => Water Cooler => Topic started by: nffc on November 03, 2010, 07:53:28 AM
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“If you think a weakness can be turned into a strength, I hate to tell you this, but that's another weakness”
Jack Handy
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"Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution." -- Clay Shirky
<merged an old post --better subject line>
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When I give food to the poor they call me a saint - when I ask why the poor have no food the call me a communist - Dom Helder Camara
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"Most of us can read the writing on the wall; we just assume it's addressed to someone else.
- Ivern Ball"
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I have this one on my bulletin board:
"The greatest revolution of our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives."
--William James
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I have a whole collection... heh But skimming through them just now, these jumped out for today:
"Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted" —Martin Luther King, Jr.
"One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries." —A. A. Milne
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"Whenever there is a hard job to be done I assign it to a lazy man; he is sure to find an easy way of doing it."
Walter Chrysler
I have always credited any success I have achieved to my inherent laziness.
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"The beauty of leaving things till the last minute is it only takes one minute to complete them."
Author Unknown
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Oh, so that is why my family always things to the last minute!!!
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Rome did not create a great empire by having meetings, they did it by killing everyone who got in their way. -anon
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"They say it all started out with a big bang. But, what I wonder is, was it a big bang or did it just seem big because there wasn't anything else drown it out at the time?"
Karl Pilkington
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"Resource" is an encomium bestowed only by users; "authority" is bestowed only by previously recognized authorities. Anyone who calls himself either one is just an ego with vocal chords. -hutcheson DMOZ
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Always be wary of any helpful item that weighs less than its operating manual. - Terry Pratchett
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don't tease fat kids they've enough on their plates
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Marketing always trumps product quality. Just look at bottled water. -anon
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A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes. --attributed to Mark Twain
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"Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on Earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude" - Thomas Jefferson
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The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you've got it made. --
Jean Giraudoux NFFC
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A Defining moment is when your first thought was "I can do this"! Your mind set or "Belief" is so important, first and foremost .....do you believe you can do this? Before you invested time, or money or skills .......you said to yourself "I can do this"! Then your on your way....belief in yourself and people will listen and follow you! Non stop to top!
--Jim Fobair
I often forget to practice this..
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"Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book."
Cicero (106-43 BC)
Nothing new under the sun.
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yeah awesome Jason, I saw it earlier on this year
this is equally inspiring too
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8ZuKF3dxCY
and this one
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiTLOW1KLPc
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In a triathlon, if you do not finish, your name is marked with "DNF"...resulting in this saying:
"DFL > DNF > DNS"
"Dead F*cking Last" is better than "Did Not Finish" is better than "Did Not Start"
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>>>religious overtone
yeah sorry Jason there was no motive behind the post believe me it was the story, the last place on earth for me is inside a church
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Have you ever noticed, when you're driving, that anyone driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone driving faster than you is a maniac? --George Carlin
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However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.
--Winston Churchill
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Ouch, LM! Point hhh
Return fire:
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -Eric Hoffer
"More money has been lost because of four words than at the point of a gun. Those words are 'This time is different'." -unk stock trader
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"When faced with two choices, simply toss a coin. It works not because it settles the question for you, but because in that brief moment when the coin is in the air, you suddenly know what you are hoping for."
via Shak, via Jim Stark, via facebook
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hey Jason, thanks for that Randy Pausch video. i've seen a different one earlier, but this one is great too...
particularly fabulous is the line from his mentor to him during his second year in school...
"it's such a shame that people perceive you as so arrogant, because it's going to limit what you're going to be able to accomplish in life".
classic.
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"George Washington didn't use his right to fr## sp##ch to defeat the British. He shot them."
--Unknown
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I used to collect quotes... now drawing pretty much a blank. Some great ones so far. A little thought and these come to mind:
"The natives, by and large, had to be driven to work with clubs, they preserved that much dignity, whereas the whites, perfected by public education, worked of their own free will. "
-- Céline, Journey to the End of the Night
"Any time you're faced with making a hard decision between two choices, you haven't looked at the problem long enough."
--??? I got this from my brother.
"I hope that when I die, people say 'Boy, that guy sure owed me a lot of money'"
-- Jack Handy
"There are two kinds of people. Those who have to carry everything through to its logical conclusion."
-- ergophobe (as far as I know).
I can't believe the number of people who, in response to hearing that last one ask, with no irony, "And what's the other kind?" to which I say, "Well, I guess that would be you."
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As I am bored stiff watching 48 thousand static html files to ftp to spam server #3, I would like to don my 'devils advocate' cap and take a couple of shots at a couple of these :
Rome did not create a great empire by having meetings, they did it by killing everyone who got in their way. -anon
Much as I like the sentiment - it isn't exactly true. 'Killing everyone who got in their way' was the failed strategy adopted by most of Rome's enemies.
The Roman Empire survived so long through a series of 'meetings' - they engaged their enemy's enemies as allies and buffer states, and used politics to keep client kingdoms and rogue states at each others throats.
Of course, my corrected version....
Rome did not create a great empire by killing everyone who got in their way immediately, they had lots of meetings to try and persuade other people to do it for them, and only if that failed did it themselves... ermm, most of the time anyway - 4eyes
.... isn't quite as pithy, and is unlikely to catch on.
"George Washington didn't use his right to fr## sp##ch to defeat the British. He shot them."
errrmmm... surely he didn't have a 'right' to fr## sp##ch at that stage? (.... and he wasn't shooting the British.... Brits on both sides, also other colonists, German mercenaries .... yada yada yada).
One could perhaps find more use in the quote (which I just made up)...
Thomas Paine did more to change the world with words than any single man armed with a gun
To be perfectly honest, had I been alive then I would have been on the side of the colonists myself rather than support a country ruled by a mad king who was more German than English and an elite upper class who were mostly descended from Norman French. I'd have been right there with Thomas Paine using as much 'slightly-free' speech as I could to try and get rid of the 'slightly' bit.
(can we get away with politics if it is 18 century politics? I would never advocate killing the Queen now, honest)
I guess my point is that the 'shoot first, ask questions later' quotes are 100% appropriate when hunting deer, but less so when someone spills your drink in the pub.
Not that I am a pacifist, I am perfectly happy with the :
Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie!"... till you can find a rock.
.. for example.
I was going to write something eloquent that explained why we should not rely on quotations to fill in the gaps in our knowledge, and then I found a good quotation that says it better than I could :
All maxims have their antagonist maxims; proverbs should be sold in pairs, a single one being but a half truth. ~William Mathews
Listen, don't mention the war! I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it all right. --- Basil Fawlty
;)
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Good Luck Mr Gorski - Neil Armstrong
Doug
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Colin you amuse me. When are you next uploading spam we need more enlightenment. :-)
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"Yes I got him a gift. He had a kidney stone. You p1ss a rock through your pecker, you deserve more than just a pat on the fcuking back."
I had a kidney stone this year!
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The higher a monkey climbs, the more you can see of its bottom.
edited for typo
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money can’t buy happiness, but it sure can buy lots of things that contribute mightily to happiness.
http://www.happiness-project.com/happiness_project/2009/03/happiness-myth-no-6-money-cant-buy-happiness.html
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The version I know, again credited to Spike Milligan:
Money can't buy friends, but it can get you a better class of enemy.
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"Never miss an opportunity to keep your mouth shut" - something my old boss said a lot.
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If you ain't first, you're last.
- Ricky Bobby
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"But maybe he's only a little crazy like painters or composers or... or some of those men in Washington. " - Miracle on 34th Street.
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"I wouldn't p i s s on you even if you was on fire"
a famous quote by our own NFFC
the same night when napoleon left webmasterworld :)
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"Until you've lost your reputation, you never realize what a burden it was." ~Margaret Mitchell
"[The US Constitution] is likely to be administered for a course of years and then end in despotism... when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other." ~Alexander Hamilton
"Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak; and that it is doing God's service when it is violating all his laws." ~John Adams
"The Press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of the government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent ANY part of the government from DECEIVING the people." ~Justice Hugo L Black, US Supreme Court
"A life without television is like a dog without bricks tied to its head." ~anon
"Talk sense to a fool, and he will call you foolish." ~Euripedes
"Existence gives things purpose, but emptiness makes them useful." ~Dao De Jing 11
...thought I'd jump back in here, since I'm inexplicably not asleep yet. :-)
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"My 'Give a sh##' is all gone..."
-Anonymous Texan
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Happiness is not having what you want. It is wanting what you have.
- Rabbi Hyman Schachtel
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"The tongue is but three inches long, yet it can kill a man six feet high."
- Japanese Proverb
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"I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book. "
Groucho Marx
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Man Plans - God/Fate laughs
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Winners Never Quit. Quitters never win.
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(social media)’s like someone’s just invented the ‘house party’ and everyone’s trying to work out if it’s ok to hit on each other’s wives or sh## in the salad bowl.
Some guy called Andy commenting on WallBlog
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don't tease fat kids they've enough on their plates
Funny.
When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around.
But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.
– Mark Twain
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"The trouble with quotes on the internet is that you can never know if they are genuine." --Abraham Lincoln (via reddit)
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On food labeling laws in Australia, or perhaps the lack of them.
The choice here is between ''safe until proved dangerous'' and ''dangerous until proved safe''.
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/its-hard-to-swallow-food-rules-that-treat-us-like-mushrooms-20110202-1adoi.html
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"The trouble with quotes on the internet is that you can never know if they are genuine." --Abraham Lincoln (via reddit)
Awesome! Still laughing. I think when I steal it, though, I'll say Mark Twain b/c so many quotes are misattributed to him.
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In theory, the following quote is true:
"Rational prediction requires theory and builds knowledge through systematic revision and extension of theory based on comparison of prediction with observation. ... It is an extension of application that discloses inadequacy of a theory, and need for revision, or even new theory. Again, without theory, there is nothing to revise. Without theory, experience has no meaning. Without theory, one has no questions to ask. Hence without theory, there is no learning."
But in practice, this one is better:
In theory, the difference between theory and practice is small. In practice, the difference between theory and practice is large.
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"I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened"
-Mark Twain
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"I put no stock in religion. By the word religion I have seen the lunacy of fanatics of every denomination be called the will of God. I have seen too much religion in the eyes of too many murderers. Holiness is in right action, and courage on behalf of those who cannot defend themselves, and goodness. What God desires is here [head] and here [heart] and (by) what you decide to do every day, you will be a good man - or not." - Hospitaller, Kingdom of Heaven
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"Affiliates have the most value when they're doing something that the merchant can't do for themselves." - Buckworks
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By popular demand (or at least at the request of grnidone)
I think most people would think my dad was one of the most driven people they had ever met. But when I was 22 and told him that I couldn't think of one purposeful, productive thing in the world that interested me, he said:
It doesn't matter. Just keep doing new things and don't hurt others. Eventually, you'll either find the things you love or you will have lived a full and varied life and you'll be eligible for Social Security. Either way, it works out.
Actually, that conversation set the course for the next 25 years (and counting).
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Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.
Rick Cook
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Nice one Peter
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"Every strike brings me closer to the next home run". ... Babe Ruth
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To avoid criticism do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.
-Elbert Hubbard
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"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts" ~Winston Churchill
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The perfect is the enemy of the good
- Voltaire
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"If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold." --blue_beetle on MetaFilter
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"If something cannot go on forever, it will stop." -Herbert Stein, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under Presidents Nixon & Ford
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“What we must decide is perhaps how we are valuable, rather than how valuable we are.” - Edgar Friedenbar
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Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
-Thomas Edison
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The too familiar vice of the present age is to obtrude as manifest truths, mere fancies, born of conjecture and superficial reasoning, altogether unsupported by the testimony of sense
Quote from a truly amazing man - Dr William Harvey (1578 - 1657) - discoverer of blood circulation and often referred to as the founder of modern medicine.
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This is not exactly a quote, it is a segment of "The Instruction of Ptahhotep to his son" - estimated date, some time before 2000BC
Follow your heart as long as you live,
Do no more than is required . . .
Don't waste time on daily cares
Beyond providing for your household;
When wealth has come, follow your heart,
Wealth does no good if one is glum!
If you want a perfect conduct,
To be free from every evil,
Guard against the vice of greed:
A grievous sickness without cure,
There is no treatment for it.
It embroils fathers, mothers,
And the brothers of the mother,
It parts wife from husband;
It is a compound of all evils,
A bundle of all hateful things.
That man endures whose rule is rightness,
Who walks a straight line;
He will make a will by it,
The greedy has no tomb.
.. more here : http://www.humanistictexts.org/ptahhotep.htm
It is not that it is 'wise' that makes it worth comment - it is the fact that this is wisdom that is pre-christianity, pre-buddhism, in fact, pre-just about everything.
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I love everybody.
Some I love to be around,
some I love to avoid,
and others I would love to punch in the face.
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I just found 88 more:
1. You can’t change other people, and it’s rude to try.
2. It is a hundred times more difficult to burn calories than to refrain from consuming them in the first place.
3. If you’re talking to someone you don’t know well, you may be talking to someone who knows way more about whatever you’re talking about than you do.
4. The cheapest and most expensive models are usually both bad deals.
5. Everyone likes somebody who gets to the point quickly.
6. Bad moods will come and go your whole life, and trying to force them away makes them run deeper and last longer.
7. Children are remarkably honest creatures until we teach them not to be.
8. If everyone in the TV show you’re watching is good-looking, it’s not worth watching.
9. Yelling always makes things worse.
10. Whenever you’re worried about what others will think of you, you’re really just worried about what you’ll think of you.
11. Every problem you have is your responsibility, regardless of who caused it.
12. You never have to deal with more than one moment at a time.
13. If you never doubt your beliefs, then you’re wrong a lot.
14. Managing one’s wants is the most powerful skill a person can learn.
15. Nobody has it all figured out.
16. Cynicism is far too easy to be useful.
17. Every passing face on the street represents a story every bit as compelling and complicated as yours.
18. Whenever you hate something, it hates you back: people, situations and inanimate objects alike.
19. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s works alone can teach you everything you need to know about living with grace and happiness.
20. People embellish everything, as a rule.
21. Anger reveals weakness of character, violence even moreso.
22. Humans cannot destroy the planet, but we can destroy its capacity to keep us alive. And we are.
23. When people are uncomfortable with the present moment, they fidget with their hands or their minds. Watch and see.
24. Those who complain the most, accomplish the least.
25. Putting something off makes it instantly harder and scarier.
26. Credit card debt devours souls.
27. Nobody knows more than a minuscule fraction of what’s going on in the world. It’s just way too big for any one person to know it well.
28. Most of what we see is only what we think about what we see.
29. A person who is unafraid to present a candid version of herself to the world is as rare as diamonds.
30. The most common addiction in the world is the draw of comfort. It wrecks dreams and breaks people.
31. If what you’re doing feels perfectly safe, there is probably a better course of action.
32. The greatest innovation in the history of humankind is language.
33. Blame is the favorite pastime of those who dislike responsibility.
34. Everyone you meet is better than you at something.
35. Proof is nothing but a collection of opinions that match your own.
36. Knowledge is belief, nothing more.
37. Indulging your desires is not self-love.
38. What makes human beings different from animals is that animals can be themselves with ease.
39. Self-examination is the only path out of misery.
40. Whoever you are, you will die. To know and understand that means you are alive.
41. Revenge is for the petty and irresponsible.
42. Getting truly organized can vastly improve anyone’s life.
43. Almost every cliché contains a truth so profound that people have been compelled to repeat it until it makes you roll your eyes. But the wisdom is still in there.
44. People cause suffering when they are suffering themselves. Alleviating their suffering will help them not hurt others.
45. High quality is worth any quantity, in possessions, friends and experiences.
46. The world would be a better place if everyone read National Geographic.
47. If you aren’t happy single, you won’t be happy in a relationship.
48. Even if it costs no money, nothing is free if it takes time.
49. Emotions exist to make us strongly biased towards or against something. This hinders as often as it helps.
50. Addiction is a much greater problem in society than it’s made out to be. It’s present in every person in various forms, but usually we call it something else.
51. “Gut feeling” is not just a euphemism. Tension in the abdomen speaks volumes about how you truly feel about something, beyond all arguments and rationales.
52. Posture and dress change profoundly how you feel about yourself and how others feel about you, like it or not.
53. Everyone thinks they’re an above average driver.
54. The urge to punish others has much more to do with venting frustration than correcting behavior.
55. By default, people think far too much.
56. If anything is worth splurging on, it’s a high-quality mattress. You’ll spend a third of your life using it.
57. There is nothing worse than having no friends.
58. To write a person off as worthless is an act of great violence.
59. Try as we might to be otherwise, we are all hypocrites.
60. Justice is a human invention which is in reality rarely achievable, but many will not hesitate to destroy lives demanding it.
61. Kids will usually understand exactly what you mean if you keep it to one or two short sentences.
62. Stuff that’s on sale usually has an annoying downside.
63. Casual swearing makes people sound dumb.
64. Words are immensely powerful. One cruel remark can wound someone for life.
65. It’s easy to make someone’s day just by being uncommonly pleasant to them.
66. Most of what children learn from their parents isn’t taught on purpose.
67. The secret ingredient is usually butter, in obscene amounts.
68. It is worth re-trying foods that you didn’t like at first.
69. Problems, when they arise, are rarely as painful as the experience of fearing them.
70. Nothing — ever — happens exactly like you pictured it.
71. North Americans are generally terrible at accepting compliments and offers of help.
72. There are not enough women in positions of power. The world has suffered from this deficit for a long time.
73. When you break promises to yourself, you feel terrible. When you make a habit of it, you begin to hate yourself.
74. A good nine out of ten bad things I’ve worried about never happened. A good nine out of ten bad things that did happen never occurred to me to worry about.
75. You can’t hide a bad mood from people who know you well, but you can always be polite.
76. Sometimes you have to remove certain people from your life, even if they’re family.
77. Anyone can be calmed in an instant by looking at the ocean or the stars.
78. There is no point finishing a book you aren’t enjoying. Life is too short for that. Swallow your pride and put it down for good, unfinished.
79. There is no correlation between the price of a brand of batteries and how long they last.
80. Breaking new ground only takes a small amount more effort than you’re used to giving.
81. Life is a solo trip, but you’ll have lots of visitors. Some of them are long-term, most aren’t.
82. One of the best things you can do for your kids is take them on road trips. I’m not a parent, but I was a kid once.
83. The fewer possessions you have, the more they do for you.
84. Einstein was wiser than he was intelligent, and he was a genius.
85. When you’re sick of your own life, that’s a good time to pick up a book.
86. Wishing things were different is a great way to torture yourself.
87. The ability to be happy is nothing other than the ability to come to terms with how things change.
88. Killing time is an atrocity. It’s priceless, and it never grows back.
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The secret ingredient is usually butter, in obscene amounts.
That's my favourite - by a long stretch :)
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Not my list, Dogboy gets the credit - I just like the butter one :)
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no worries here, I didn't write these ones for sure, and I didn't even read the whole thing myself, but there are a few gems in there, the butter one being one of the best;)
Good taste:)
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"The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese"
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I am such a quote fiend that I registered a web site to store my favorite quotes (http://www.famous-quote.net/) which now uses Srini G's Quotes Collection plugin for Wordpress (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/quotes-collection/).
Here are a few quotes from the late Thomas J. Watson of IBM fame:
Recently, I was asked if I was going to fire an employee who made a mistake that cost the company $600,000. No, I replied, I just spent $600,000 training him. Why would I want somebody to hire his experience?
Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the dangers of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of ‘crackpot’ than the stigma of conformity. And on issues that seem important to you, stand up and be counted at any cost.
All the problems of the world could be settled easily if men were only willing to think. The trouble is that men very often resort to all sorts of devices in order not to think, because thinking is such hard work.
Don’t make friends who are comfortable to be with. Make friends who will force you to lever yourself up.
If you stand up and be counted, from time to time you may get yourself knocked down. But remember this: A man flattened by an opponent can get up again. A man flattened by conformity stays down for good.
If you want to achieve excellence, you can get there today. As of this second, quit doing less-than-excellent work.
It is better to aim at perfection and miss, than to aim at imperfection and hit it.
The man who bases his actions on independent thought; who reflects and considers before doing anything, and whose judgments are arrived at through logic, is the man who will go farthest today.
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I felt sure that first one was Henry Ford.
Anyway. Saw this one recently.
You are not paid to work hard. In fact, you are not paid for effort at all. You are paid for results. It's not what you do; it's what you get done.
Larry Winget
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"I'm not happy being the nicest horse in the glue factory." --Richard Fisher (Dallas Federal Reserve President)
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"I am losing precious days. I am degenerating into a machine for making money. I am learning nothing in this trivial world of men. I must break away and get out into the mountains to learn the news."
-- John Muir, 1883 as quoted by Samuel Hall Young (http://books.google.com/books?id=hEZIAAAAMAAJ&dq=%22I+am+degenerating+into+a+machine+for+making+money%22&pg=PA204#v=onepage&q=%22I%20am%20degenerating%20into%20a%20machine%20for%20making%20money%22&f=false)
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"There are 10 kinds of people in this world: Those who understand ternary, those who don't, and those who confuse it with binary."
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“What you are is what you have been. What you’ll be is what you do now." -Buddha
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(https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/299704_202261539844658_153409601396519_429790_1332913914_n.jpg)
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“What you are is what you have been. What you’ll be is what you do now." -Buddha
Mmm... not really. Thanissaro Bhikkhu, monk and translator of Buddha, tags this as another famous thing the Buddha never said (or at least, if he said it, there's no record of it).
http://www.facebook.com/notes/shambhala-sun/more-of-what-the-buddha-never-said/10150336746260419
3) If you want to see a person’s past actions, look at his present condition. If you want to see a person’s future condition, look at his present actions.
This idea turns karma into something very simplistic and deterministic. It’s what I call the “one karmic bank account” theory—the idea that your present condition shows the running balance in your karmic account: the sum total of all your good actions, minus the sum total of your bad actions, equals what you’re experiencing right now.
Instead of a single bank account, the Buddha compared your past karma to a field of seeds: Some seeds have already sprouted, some are not yet ready to sprout, and as for the ones that are ready to sprout, those that get the most water with the best chance of flourishing. This means that, even though you can’t go back and change the seeds you’ve already planted, you do have some control over which seeds you’re going to water. In other words, your present condition shows only a sliver of your past actions; your present actions influence the extent to which you’re going to suffer over that sliver or not.
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Ok. How about...
“What you are is what you have been. What you’ll be is what you do now." - Edo
:D
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Ok. How about...
“What you are is what you have been. What you’ll be is what you do now." - Edo
:D
Fair enough ;-)
I used to be fond of saying, "As Socrates said: 'Who cares?"" because I'm reasonably sure that Socrates at least once in his life said the anicent Greek equivalent of "Who cares?"
Or more to the point...
Maude: "The Earth is my body; my head is in the stars! … Who said that?"
Harold: "I don't know."
Maude: "Well, I guess I did.”
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"SEO is alive and well. It just looks more like marketing than it used to." -- Wheel
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4373457.htm
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"SEO is alive and well. It just looks more like marketing than it used to." -- Wheel
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4373457.htm
"Making money is alive and well. It just looks more like work than it used to." -- ergophobe
http://th3core.com/talk/water-coolerextra/quotes-that-hit-home/msg14478/#msg14478
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Most rules do not apply if you know the one making them.
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A good friend is someone who knows everything about you and still loves you despite what they know.
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"Designers can't code, coders can't design." - Rumbas.
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Yeh I thought that was some clever symmetry going on there from Rumbas. Not really a surprise that someone from Denmark can speak better English than us native speakers. Scandinavia are about 50 years ahead of the world in most things.
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That would look great on your CV, not so good on mine.
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Sorry if it's been said before, but I like
Imagination is more important than knowledge
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"I'll make an appearance at the [wedding] dance, but I usually leave early: nobody actually likes to 'get down' until the preacher leaves."
Rev. Gary Lissy
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Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.
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If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.
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Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour.
Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute.
THAT'S relativity.
(Einstein)
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"To be a great woman, act like a girl, dress like a lady, think like a man and work like a dog".
-- May Issue of Southern Living Magazine, 2012
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(https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/s480x480/575922_10151843546340252_1910999437_n.jpg)
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"the one who does not remember history is bound to live it through again"
It was on a plaque when I visited Auschwitz
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"we've spent more money on bailing out the bankers in one year than we've spent on science, in Britain, since Jesus"
Brian Cox yesterday http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-18736011
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"Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle." - Steve Jobs
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Come to the edge.
We might fall.
Come to the edge.
It's too high!
COME TO THE EDGE!
And they came,
and we pushed,
And they flew.
Christopher Logue
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If you think you can, or if think your can't.
You are probably right.
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This isn't a quote but lots of them. In fact it's my favourite motivational speech of all time. Helps that I worship the ground that Arnie walks on ;D
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuJ4hbkLiY0
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"To develop a complete mind: Study the science of art; Study the art of science. Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else."
- Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci
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(https://fbcdn-sphotos-g-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/68433_439838522720544_1013717563_n.jpg)
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From a letter to my cousin...
Look, this is going to sound like it's coming out of nowhere, but it is what it is... someday you are going to die. And everyone you know will be affected by it - some more than others. And then, someday THEY will die, and the same thing will happen to them. And NO MATTER HOW IMPORTANT YOU BECOME, in time, you will be forgotten, and for all intents and purposes it will be as if you never have existed. So live for today. Enjoy it. It is your day. Do what you want with it. If you want to just waste it, go ahead, it doesn't matter. But I suggest you ENJOY it. Because if there is one goal you should have in life it is to enjoy yourself. So do that. Let that sh## drop off your back, and do whatever the f### you want. Because in the long run, no matter WHAT you do will matter. So make it matter now, and enjoy it:)
- dogboy
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"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face in marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."
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This one goes against my sarcastic nature, but it hit me as truth today.
"Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid." -Albert Einstein
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There's no right, there's no wrong, there's only popular opinion. --Jeffrey Goines character in Twelve Monkeys (1995)
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"There's nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so"
-- Shakespeare, Hamlet (Act II, I believe"
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“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” ― Henry Ford
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(http://)
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"This is only temporary, unless it works." --Red Green
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“Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life.” -- Terry Pratchett, Jingo
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My mom called me gifted because she would not have paid for me. --stillragin on reddit
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The difference between smart kids and dumb kids is that smart kids don't get caught when they cheat. --anon
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The difference between poison and medicine is almost always merely dosage.
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They don't put barnes and nobles in bad areas, so if you are lost in a bad area put "Barnes and noble" in your GPS.
Reddit
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Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds!
Bob Marley
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"The business model of free is the business model of corporate surveillance. "
On how Google, Facebook and the NSA use your data:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldhHkVjLe7A
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That needs a thread of its own. A whole forum..
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"but you can’t maintain virality by writing a headline for robots"
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Dreams only work if you do
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“Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.”
- Abe Lincoln
I've been trying to find a quote, without luck. Something along the lines of, "When the house is full, your (ticket) price is too low." older quote, referencing live theater. Anybody recognize or know the actual quote verbiage?
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"the days pass slowly, the decades quickly" --some guy on reddit
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"but it'd be like trying to merge 4chan and Linkedin"
LM
http://th3core.com/talk/traffic/google-has-finally-acknowledged-that-google-isn't-working-out/
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"The 80s weren't so bad."
-- littleman
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^^ best one yet :)
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There is nothing more dreadful than imagination without taste. --Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Less than one tenth of one percent of all tweets are about sandwich bags. Let that sink in. Nobody is tweeting about bags.
- Jason Feifer here:http://www.theawl.com/2015/09/lets-sell-some-sh##-to-these-millennials##-to-these-millennials
- HT to RC who quoted it here: http://th3core.com/talk/marketing/gurtie-i-have-a-must-read-(preferably-aloud)-article-for-your-next-staff-meetng/
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''There is nothing more expensive than a free boat.''
-
.
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Just because you can't dance, doesn't mean you shouldn't dance. —Alcohol
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Just because you can't dance, doesn't mean you shouldn't dance. —Alcohol
"I really do believe this: that music is too important to be left to professionals..."
Michelle Shocked, "Austin City Limits" TV show, 1990. http://www.mypage.tsn.cc/toddby/derivations.htm
I always thought that was Pete Seeger that said it, but as best I can tell on the interwebs, it's not.
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"The last people with jobs will be AI programmers.” -George Hotz
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"Florida is like the South tried to have a baby with California but after the fact realized they were siblings and ended up with a troglodyte child. "
Dr. Cool
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"If you go through your day and meet one a##hole: okay, you met an a##hole.
If you go through your day and all you meet are assholes: you might be the a##hole."
Reddit
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"Les indigènes eux, ne fonctionnent guère en somme qu’à coups de trique, ils gardent cette dignité, tandis que les Blancs, perfectionnés par l’instruction publique, ils marchent tout seuls."
-- Celine, Voyage au bout de la nuit
In English, roughly
"The natives, they hardly did anything without being beaten with a cudgel. They retained that much dignity, whereas the whites, perfected by public education, worked entirely of their own accord."
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So basically: society is pacifying and education is a tool instill compliance?
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Well, as the historian, that's probably about how I would put it. Though Celine is writing in the context of being drafted and then deserting (I think) in WWI and seeing the carnage and raises the question of what it means to be perceived as sane by a society that has gone insane.
So I think Celine's point is more about the internalization of masters, the liberty of mind versus the liberty of body, which I guess is the same thing as a tool to instill compliance.
I first read the quote about 20 years ago and it always stuck with me.
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"Better to die than live a coward."
http://www.allthingsworkplace.com/2009/10/do-you-have-the-commitment-of-a-gurkha.html
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That's commitment to a cause.
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'If you're going to miss Heaven, why miss it by two inches?' -Sam Kinison
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Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. --Samuel Johnson April 1775
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"Just remember, when you point the finger there's three more fingers pointing back at you." - Unknown.
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When viewing the world through rose-colored glasses, red flags just look like flags.
-reddit
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When viewing the world through rose-colored glasses, red flags just look like flags.
!!! That's not a quote. That's a tool!
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>a tool
Absolutely! Best quote in this thread, Dras. I have a related quip I used to make to those complaining about Debbie Downer:
An optimist, almost by definition, is never prepared to handle problems.
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When viewing the world through rose-colored glasses, red flags just look like flags.
!!! That's not a quote. That's a tool!
I remember when tools were called utilities ! f### Apps !
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Must remember. Must remember. Must remember.
This quote is up there with one my wife likes: "Never judge your insides by someone else's outsides."
By tools, I mean these are literally chisels, lathes and saws that you can use to shape your reality for the better.
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>This quote is up there with one my wife likes: "Never judge your insides by someone else's outsides."
However, I have found it very easy to determine someone's insides on how they treat other people's outsides...
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Great variant.
She usually is thinking of situations where you see someone and think "Wow. She's so confident. I wish I were like that when I need to speak to a group" and then you find out the person is so scared that she hasn't eaten all day. Or "That person has it so together and is so happy, I wish I could be like that" and that other person is suffering from deep depression.
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Simply Theresa, seems like a very wise woman indeed.
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The variant is awesome and one worth adding to a mental collection.
Ergophobe is right of course. And like many quotes that I really like I wish they would come to mind more often when I really need them.
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Please ignore anything i posted after 2am! I think i was a bit typsy!
Favourite quotes :
'Civilisation is a race between disaster and education' H.G. Wells.
'Self-control is the chief element in self-respect, and self-respect is the chief element in courage.' Thucydides.
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>'Civilization is a race between disaster and education' H.G. Wells.
We're smart enough to do a lot of damage, not wise enough to stop ourselves.
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Well, we're smart enough, but those other guys are idiots, ya know?
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"We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing." - George Bernard Shaw
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"We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing." - George Bernard Shaw
Not heard that one, totally agree.
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Actually... I would like to know how old GBS was when he wrote that. Watching people struggle through their later years, I call BS on that one.
I prefer, instead, the quote from Utah Philips, speaking of Nevada City, CA (form memory, but close enough)
Meanwhile old Jesse McVeigh the well digger is sitting on the porch of the Union Hotel watching all the freaks walk by in the street and saying "No matter how New Age you get, old age gonna kick your a##.
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I feel like there should be "eventually" at the end of that quote of yours. The lucky of us who live long enough will grow old eventually, but we have a role in when that happens. I know people at 50 that are much older than my grandmother was at 80.
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First off, apologies to Gary. Didn't mean to rain on your quote.
I guess it's just rather overused in the circles I run in. I've always had a wide age range in my friends - even in my twenties I had a dear friend (non-family) in his 80s. I've seen so many struggle with old age and feel like our society has a culture of youth that pretends old age is not going to happen.
But I do understand the sentiment. I'm the 53-year-old guy who still rides the shopping cart down the hill to the car. Since this is so obviously fun if your market has a parking lot on a hill, it is an utter mystery to me that I have *never* seen another adult do this at my market.
It is tragic the extent to which many adults have lost their sense of play.
>>older than my grandmother
My mentor was about 80 when my wife died her hair blue. Everyone over the age of 50 said "What did you do *that* for?" I was curious what Bob would say. We met him on the street and he saw the sun shining through making her hair electric blue and he said "Your hair is BLUE!"
I thought "Uh oh."
And without missing a beat he said "It's so festive! I love it!"
And I thought "Oh yes, that's why I love this man"
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>lost their sense of play
That's easy to say when you don't hurt. I've known a (very) few elders that have seemingly breezed into old age without much chronic pain or age-related loss of abilities (that's different than age-related disabilities, imo).
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First off, apologies to Gary. Didn't mean to rain on your quote.
No bad weather felt here :)
I also take a quick ride on the shopping trolleys now and then :)
Here's to blue hair and the elderly!
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>lost their sense of play
That's easy to say when you don't hurt. I've known a (very) few elders that have seemingly breezed into old age without much chronic pain or age-related loss of abilities (that's different than age-related disabilities, imo).
RC - that's exactly what I was getting at when I posted my original response to Gary.
My grandmother told me once that her best years were he 80s. When I asked why, she said "Everyone around me is in terrible pain and I'm not and nobody can tell you want to do when you're 88." That's a much different standard than when she was younger. This is a woman who won the town Fourth of July footrace when she was 16, beating all the men, and into her early 20s could beat every man in Burlington VT in speed skating. The only time she ever got mad at me that I remember is when she told me she had been the fast skater in town and I said "The fastest girl?" and she boomed "THE FASTEST SKATER!!" with real anger. But by 88 years old, having less pain than her neighbors constituted real happiness.
And for the record, the day before she died, she kicked her great grandson's butt in a game of Crazy Eights. She never lost her sense of play.
PS... among quotes in my life that have hit home are two in my last two posts
- "It's so festive. I love it"
- "THE FASTEST SKATER"
But I don't think they would inspire others without knowing the people ;-)
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Nice story. My grandmother is still going at 93 BTW.
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>lost their sense of play
That's easy to say when you don't hurt. I've known a (very) few elders that have seemingly breezed into old age without much chronic pain or age-related loss of abilities (that's different than age-related disabilities, imo).
RC - that's exactly what I was getting at when I posted my original response to Gary.
My grandmother told me once that her best years were he 80s. When I asked why, she said "Everyone around me is in terrible pain and I'm not and nobody can tell you want to do when you're 88." That's a much different standard than when she was younger. This is a woman who won the town Fourth of July footrace when she was 16, beating all the men, and into her early 20s could beat every man in Burlington VT in speed skating. The only time she ever got mad at me that I remember is when she told me she had been the fast skater in town and I said "The fastest girl?" and she boomed "THE FASTEST SKATER!!" with real anger. But by 88 years old, having less pain than her neighbors constituted real happiness.
And for the record, the day before she died, she kicked her great grandson's butt in a game of Crazy Eights. She never lost her sense of play.
PS... among quotes in my life that have hit home are two in my last two posts
- "It's so festive. I love it"
- "THE FASTEST SKATER"
But I don't think they would inspire others without knowing the people ;-)
I'd love to have met your granny, sounds very cool.
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Nice story. My grandmother is still going at 93 BTW.
That's good going.
The UK mortality rate is slowly increasing year-on-year, i think people were generally healthier years ago when life was harder and food was purer.
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Nice story. My grandmother is still going at 93 BTW.
Yay for her!
My dad is 87 and does not take a single pill. In May he did the last 100K of the pilgrimage of Santiago Compostella and, in his longest day, walked 18 miles (they had planned 6-8 per day for a 9-day walk, but doubled up two days to finish in 7). He was in more than a little pain sometimes though. As my mom always said "Getting old is not for sissies."
At the other end of the spectrum, a quote that really hit home for my wife and I, but it needs a bit of setup.
A couple of months ago, we were awoken at about 6am by screaming kids about 4-6 years old. At first we were grumpy and I didn't want to be the grumpy man who yells "Hey, you kids shut up!" but it was kind of egregious. But then we heard what they were yelling. They were just playing and looking at plants and bugs. We heard one kid yell "Guys! Guys! A worm!" We love it when kids discover nature, so we just listened and watched, eventually migrating to the porch to see. And then this kid, about four years old comes bombing down the hill in front of the house. He looks like he's just barely staying on his feet, not quite having the coordination to run *that* fast. And as he goes by our house he screams with all his heart "Llluuuuckkkkyyy! Lllluuuucckkyyy! Iiii'mmmm sooooo llluuckky!"
No idea what he saw, but now my wife and I say that to each other all the time, remembering that kid and trying to take time to appreciate the goodness that often surrounds us.
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"Getting old is not for sissies."
Just pulling that one out, contender for best of thread award.
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"Getting old is not for sissies."
Just pulling that one out, contender for best of thread award.
Famous quote, often attributed to Bette Davis. The long version is sometimes given as "Getting old is not for sissies, but it sure beats the alternative."
A few years ago I made my mom a mug and some fridge magnets with the quote on it
http://www.cafepress.com/takenforranted.265704106
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"Today you are not behind your competition. You are not behind the technology. You are behind your consumer."
Rishad Tobaccowala
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"Eat a live snake heart beating in rice wine liquor, it will give you testicular fortitude."
Mr Chinn
(video available, message me)
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"Eat a live snake heart beating in rice wine liquor, it will give boom boom good."
FTFY
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Some days even the baboon misses the branch
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"Never too old for a happy childhood."
- a Scottish Southern California resident who modifies Mini Coopers for a living
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Personally, I never believe anything I say.
Ergophobe. Saved for use when I have had a glass to many.
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Personally, I never believe anything I say.
Ergophobe. Saved for use when I have had a glass to many.
Ha ha! If this gets out, it will ruin my election campaign. My more common variation....
My grandmother used to always say "Everyone's crazy except you and me, and sometimes I'm not so sure about you."
When I got a little older, I started telling her "Gram, everyone's crazy except you and me and sometimes I'm not so sure about me."
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She was probably right :)
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"I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time—when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness."
--Carl Sagan’s 1995 book: Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
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No doubt that this is bubbling up from the past due to recent statements like "alternative facts".
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“You know, the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common,” the Doctor said. “They don’t alter their views to fit the facts. They alter the facts to fit their views.” --Doctor Who episode “The Face of Evil Part 4.”
Hat tip:
http://io9.gizmodo.com/doctor-who-quote-about-alternative-facts-sounds-awfully-1791490382
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"It is possible to make no mistakes and lose. That is not failure; that is life." - Picard, Star Trek
"You couldn't be more wrong if you put all the words you just wrote in a bag and pulled them out at random" Some Reddit Dude
“Enough. There’s no such thing. We take what can be taken. That is what we do.” The Zec - Jack Reacher
"I'm gonna make you swallow those words with a cup full of my pi**" At All Costs (Netflix)
"True humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less" CS Lewis
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"You can get 20 years of experience once, or you can get 1 year of experience 20 times, the choice is yours." --mechanic friend Jim Hupy
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"The more you sweat in training, the less you'll bleed in battle."
-- from one of my sons, source unknown.
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"The more you sweat in training, the less you'll bleed in battle."
-- from one of my sons, source unknown.
That's from this author :
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/26111.Richard_Marcinko
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Cool. Thanks! :)
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"The first rule of sustainability is profitability."
- Pamela Reisig
grnidone's Mom
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"True friends say good things behind your back and bad things to your face."
Via Reddit
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"True friends say good things behind your back and bad things to your face."
Reminds me of a quote from my mom that I always loved:
"If your father's sisters want to talk about me, I wish they would have the decency to do it behind my back."
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On the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars, and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.
--Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
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Ha Ha, good one. That reminds me of one of my favourites from that series :
“You know," said Arthur, "it's at times like this, when I'm trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space that I really wish I'd listened to what my mother told me when I was young."
"Why, what did she tell you?"
"I don't know, I didn't listen.”
I had the whole of that story to tape, and lost it in the switch to digital somehow.
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Good one!
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Douglas Adams was a genius. I know they are from different times and places, but he reminds me of Samuel Clemens in some ways.
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Speaking of... Here are a few from Mark Twain on Courage:
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear--not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward, it is not a compliment to say he is brave; it is merely a loose misapplication of the word.
It is curious--curious that physical courage should be so common in the world, and moral courage so rare.
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Not really a quote but an exchange from Reddit, has really struck a cord with me on the dangers of not executing a plan perfectly.
"If coal turns to diamonds through pressure, could we dump a bunch of coal on the ocean floor to turn them into diamonds faster?"
"Nope, it's nowhere near enough pressure. The pressure at the bottom of the mariana trench is nearly 16,000 psi. The pressure required to make diamonds the natural way? 750,000 psi.
You'd have wet coal."
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Amos Tversky: “The secret to doing good research is always to be a little underemployed.”
Michael Lewis: “You waste years by not being able to waste hours.”
Both quoted here: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/18/opinion/youre-too-busy-you-need-a-shultz-hour.html
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Those are both really great quotes, I bet it is at least part of the reason why people seem to do their most creative work when they are young -- the time of their lives when they typically have the least amount of responsibility.
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Yeah, great article. I could pull a quote from the author himself that hits home for me:
"I have confused the availability of new information with the importance of it. If you spend all your time collecting new information, you won’t leave enough time to make sense of it."
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"To be clear, Jesus is not so concerned about a 6-figure income - when used for blessing the poor. But he's very concerned about a 6-figure lifestyle - in a world where children starve."
-- http://www.craiggreenfield.com/blog/prosperitygospel
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The only money you ever have is the money you spend.
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http://www.craiggreenfield.com/blog/prosperitygospel
That's a good essay, regardless of belief. I was just discussing with a friend yesterday the secular, New Agey equivalent, which comes in the form of "This is where the universe wants me to be right now" or "The universe always provides what you need" or "I believe everything always works out for the best."
I always find myself saying "So you believe it's for the best that 17,000 children to die of malnutrition every day?"
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I'll always remember a scene from the movie "Oh God" where John Denver's character asked God why he permitted [list of bad things, including children starving].
God, played by George Burns, looked back at him and asked, "Why do YOU let it happen?"[/list]
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God, played by George Burns, looked back at him and asked, "Why do YOU let it happen?"[/list]
Of course, as you know, the "theodicy" problem is much more complicated than that. If you believe in an all-powerful, all-knowing, loving God who stands outside of time, the the problem of evil in the world is a fundamental theological problem with various mostly unsatisfying answers from Augustine to Platinga in the Christian tradition. Some Christian theologians (Karl Barth, for example) believe that it is impossible to establish the idea of the goodness of God and some believe it is actual blasphemous and counterproductive to think about the role of God in evil in the world. In the Jewish tradition, the Holocaust provoked a major rethinking of the problem of theodicy and many reject it entirely. I really don't think anyone in the Judeo-Christian tradition has a satisfying reconciliation of the idea of an omnipotent, omniscient, good god and the presence of evil in the world (which is why some theologians just say it is blasphemous to try to explain it).
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"It's an Earth food. They are called Swedish meatballs. It's a strange thing, but every sentient race has its own version of these Swedish meatballs! I suspect it's one of those great universal mysteries which will either never be explained, or which would drive you mad if you ever learned the truth." - G'Kar, Babylon 5
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“The benefit of controlling a modern state is less the power to persecute the innocent, more the power to protect the guilty.” --unknown Hungarian
-
timely
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The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.
Pablo Picasso
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The first instinct of power is the retention of power. --Antonin Scalia
-
"What one programmer can do in one month, 2 programmers can do in two months"
-
In startup we are leave critical bug in each of release so we can able fix in next release.
https://twitter.com/devops_borat/
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In startup we are leave critical bug in each of release so we can able fix in next release.
It's an old saw among contractors that you leave one code violation that's easy to fix so the inspector feels he's done his job and doesn't fish too deep.
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"Build your own dreams, or someone else will hire you to build theirs." -Farrah Gray
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I don’t know who discovered water, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a fish
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/12/23/water-fish/
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When we’d arranged a date to meet, he’d said he was free at any time on any day—he had no conflicting meetings, only a never-ending pile of solitary work.
Olivia Goldhill writing about arranging a meeting with Oxford philosopher Jeff McMahan
https://qz.com/1102616/an-oxford-philosophers-moral-crisis-can-help-us-learn-to-question-our-instincts/
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>> no conflicting meetings, only a never-ending pile of solitary work.
That is [almost] the story of my life! :)
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Honestly, that would be my dream job.
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Your dreams wont work unless you do - anonymous
A favourite quote of mine
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Quality
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Buying quality is like buying oats. If you want nice, dry, clean oats you have to pay a fair price. If you want oats that have already been through the horse, that comes cheaper.
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"Find out who you are and do it on purpose."
- Dolly Parton
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Privileged white males have the luxury of remaining ignorant of subtle social signals; less-privileged groups live and die by them. --David Roberts
<Why small talk is so excruciating -- https://www.vox.com/2015/7/7/8903123/small-talk >
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"Don't quit when you're tired; quit when you're done!"
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"Don't quit when you're tired; quit when you're done!"
This is how mountaineers die. Of course, it's also how they get to the top. As I like to say, "The human capacity for continuing to put one foot in front of the other is surprising." One of the main things you learn from doing hard endurance things is that from the moment you feel like you can't go on until the moment you actually can't go on, could result in a doubling or tripling of how far you can go.
But not knowing when to quit leads to side effects, such as death. And more generally, in life, not knowing when to take a break and recharge leads to inefficiencies and globally longer periods to actually reach your goal. This is well known from studies going back to the 19th century, and especially from studies in the British munitions industry during The Great War. More recently from studies in the software industry.
So I've always preferred the Zen master's answer to the question "What is the secret to life?"
When hungry, I eat. When tired, I sleep.
:-)
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Quitting is different than just taking a break, but I take your point about the value of taking a break.
How about "Rest, then resume" ?
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"Sleep is a weapon too." Walter Jon Williams
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but I take your point
And I take yours too of course (you have one of my "Fac Res Difficila" challenge coins right? If not, let me know and I'll bring one to dinner... week after next I guess).
I definitely get the point of the quote and don't disagree, but at the same time, I think one of my biggest weaknesses is not knowing when to quit. I've been trying to get better at quitting :-)
The tough part is being able to see when it's worth pushing on and when one should quit. I err in both directions, that's for sure.
Marc Twight, one of the great American mountaineers, coined (AFAIK) the phrase "failing upward." Failing upward is when you should have quit, but didn't, and your only way to extricate yourself from your decision, is to go to the top. He calls it failing upward because he would say anytime you have lost control of the situation and your only option is a high-risk run for the summit, you've "failed upwards." I find that a helpful heuristic.
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"Fac Res Difficila" challenge coins
A quick google search found nothing?
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"Fac Res Difficila" challenge coins
A quick google search found nothing?
One of a kind. I designed them and had them minted. It's Latin for "Do Hard Things" - I gave one to everyone who came to dinner at Pubcon two (?) years ago. Littleman's deadlifting daughter received one too.
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I never got one. I'd love to ...
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My kids keeps her's on her bookshelf.
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Thanks.. love it.
I dont suppose you would care to share the design? :)
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I never got one. I'd love to ...
You must have missed that dinner at Pubcon - everyone there got one. I'll bring some next week.
>>share the design
Mmm... sort of a weird thing, but no, I'd rather not share the design online anywhere. I actually hesitated to mention the coin in public. I've occasionally thought about trying to sell it, but because of the way it came into being, I've preferred to keep it among friends.
I would be *thrilled* to send you one though. PM me a mailing address and wait two weeks. I enjoy sending them to people who might appreciate them.
>>keeps her's on her bookshelf
That's sweet. And that's why I don't want the design shared too much. Most who receive it are indifferent. But for some people it's sort of unique thing that comes at a good time and that you can't get elsewhere. I want to keep it that way.
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But for some people it's sort of unique thing that comes at a good time and that you can't get elsewhere.
Thats what I was thinking... the design will be unique :)
I would be *thrilled* to send you one though.
WOW> the thrill is all mine!
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"bet on the innovators, not the forecasters"
-- Ramez Naam (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwSkQa1tNmE)
(good lecture on the rise of alternative energy)
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Seen on a forum:
"You know you are old if you fall down and people rush to help, rather than laughing."
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"This is the final exam for democracy." - Bob Woodward from his Masterclass pitch.
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"I am the storm."
This is from Mallory Hagan, 2013 Miss America, who had alleged that the board of the pageant had tried to ruin her career. People wrote her off... until emails from the pageant board got released. People were calling for the board to step down, but they were shrugging it off.
In one video on social media, Hagan challenged board members who were reluctant to step down. “They thought they could weather this storm,” she said into the camera. “I am the storm.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/the-political-playbook-for-2018-get-angry-then-get-elected/2018/02/16/d29df57e-1265-11e8-9065-e55346f6de81_story.html?utm_term=.077b39ef5760
The board members are now apparently all gone and Hagan is running for Congress. I'd vote for her if I lived in Alabama. Gotta believe she's a longshot (Democrat in AL), but... she's got style!
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I'm a happy person. Because the cure for depression is action.
-- Yvon Chouinard
https://www.gq.com/story/patagonia-versus-donald-trump
Update: another quote from the same article
If you're not getting attacked, you're not trying hard enough.
“In business, this is what we do here—we just break the rules,” he said. “Life is so much easier by breaking the rules than trying to conform to the rules. It's so much easier.”
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You must learn from the mistakes of others. You can't possibly live long enough to make them all yourself.
- Sam Levenson
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You can't possibly live long enough to make them all yourself.
But Lord, there are days when it feels like you can.
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"For 50 million years our biggest problems were too few calories, too little information. For about 50 years our biggest problem has been too many calories, too much information." - Penn Jillette
http://www.vulture.com/2018/08/penn-jillette-in-conversation.html
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Segal's Law: "A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure.
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Those two are tied together.
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Those two are tied together.
Entirely accidental. I hadn't seen aaron's quote when I came to post Segal's Law, but was pleased to see that it fit so well with his quote.
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"Empires place their reliance upon sword and cannon. Republics put their trust in citizens’ respect for the law. If law be not sacred, a free government will not endure." -- John Ireland
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I'm not big on companies using a bunch of short videos instead of writing stuff out.
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Never vacation in a place where you are in the middle of the food chain.
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But the long run is made up of short runs.
Seth Godin - https://seths.blog/2018/09/the-daily/
It's similar to another favorite idea of Seth's that I repeat to myself all the time.
Someone asked me where I get all my good ideas, explaining that it takes him a month or two to come up with one and I seem to have more than that. I asked him how many bad ideas he has every month. He paused and said, "none."
And there, you see, is the problem.
https://seths.blog/2009/12/fear-of-bad-ideas/
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"When there is a lot going on and you do not know what to do, you do what's right in front of you."
-- Paraphrase from a TV show, Ozark
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Because here's something else that's true. In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship-be it J.C. or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles-is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things-if they are where you tap real meaning in life-then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already-it's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness. Worship power-you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart-you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on.
Look, the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful; it is that they are unconscious. They are default-settings. They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing. And the world will not discourage you from operating on your default-settings, because the world of men and money and power hums along quite nicely on the fuel of fear and contempt and frustration and craving and the worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom to be lords of our own tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying. The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default-setting, the "rat race"-the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing.
I know that this stuff probably doesn't sound fun and breezy or grandly inspirational. What it is, so far as I can see, is the truth with a whole lot of rhetorical bullshit pared away. Obviously, you can think of it whatever you wish. But please don't dismiss it as some finger-wagging Dr. Laura sermon. None of this is about morality, or religion, or dogma, or big fancy questions of life after death. The capital-T Truth is about life before death. It is about making it to thirty, or maybe fifty, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head. It is about simple awareness-awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, that we have to keep reminding ourselves, over and over: "This is water, this is water."
It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive, day in and
day out.
David Foster Wallace (http://www.metastatic.org/text/This%20is%20Water.pdf)
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It is about making it to thirty, or maybe fifty, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head.
From someone who hung himself at age 46.
But it reminds me of the line in the Bill Murray version of Razor's Edge that goes something like: "I don't want a big house, a new car every year and a bunch of friends with big houses and new cars every year."
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Along the lines of David Foster Wallace (at least they seem connected to me):
The world is filled with people who are no longer needed -- and who try to make slaves of all of us -- and they have their music and we have ours.
— From Pastures of Plenty: A Self-Portrait, p. 106
And this one, which I just like:
This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright #154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ours, cause we don't give a darn. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do.
— Message on mimeographed copies of lyrics distributed to fans in the 1930s, as quoted by Pete Seeger in an NPR interview "Pete Seeger remembers Woody" (1996)
Oh, and one more. A long one. The first part is well-known, but the end is the best.
I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard traveling. … I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood.
I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work.
And the songs that I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you. I could hire out to the other side, the big money side, and get several dollars every week just to quit singing my own kind of songs and to sing the kind that knock you down still farther and the ones that poke fun at you even more and the ones that make you think you've not any sense at all. But I decided a long time ago that I'd starve to death before I'd sing any such songs as that. The radio waves and your movies and your jukeboxes and your songbooks are already loaded down and running over with such no good songs as that anyhow.
Statement quoted in Prophet Singer: The Voice And Vision of Woody Guthrie (2007) by Mark Allan Jackson. There are a few slight variants of this statement, which seems to have originated in a performance monologue.
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Woodie Guthrie - musical hero.
My quote for today (quoting myself in response to a love-and-light type post on another forum) :
"I hope whoever's reading this ALWAYS has to struggle for what they want, and that whatever they want DOESN'T come easily to them, and whoever they spend time with ISN'T like-minded to them, otherwise you'll learn nothing'"
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I feel like Guthrie, like MLK, gets filtered these days and that most people only get the easy to digest (not controversial) elements of what they were about.
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"My name is Larry Gibson, and I’m standing on top of my family’s land on Kayford Mountain. All around me in every direction on this very mountain is mountaintop removal mining. This family land is an island of rich green in a sea of barren wasteland. They say I have 39 seams of coal here, underneath our land. They also say this land is worth $650 million to the coal industry. But there’s not enough money that’s been printed or made that can buy this place. There are some things money shouldn’t be able to buy."
-- https://earthjustice.org/slideshow/images-of-mountaintop-removal-mining - slide 20 of 23
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"People like Coldplay and voted for the Nazis. You can't trust people."
https://www.reddit.com/user/RhyssyhR
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Sleep is awesome because it's like death without the commitment.
-someguy on reddit
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When you're tired rest, don't quit.
- some dude on Reddit
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Don’t confuse difficult with impossible.
Difficult means there is a way. Most likely a way you don’t prefer but still a way.
-- some dude on Twitter
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>Difficult means there is a way. Most likely a way you don’t prefer but still a way.
My subcontractors sometimes whine about how hard a job I've given them. I tell them "If it was easy anybody could do it ...and YOU wouldn't be here." They quit whining.
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Things won are done, joy's soul lies in the doing.
-Shakespeare
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Things won are done, joy's soul lies in the doing.
-Shakespeare
True and deep.
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A little more Shakespeare for you. My two faves
Why, then, ’tis none to you, for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. To me it is a prison.
Hamlet, Act II, Scene II
All pity choked with custom of fell deeds
Julius Cesar, Act 3 Scene 1, quoted by Jane Goodall, tears in her eyes, to Roger Fouts while leaving one of the US government-funded facilities that use chimps for research.
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A little more Shakespeare for you. My two faves
Why, then, ’tis none to you, for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. To me it is a prison.
Hamlet, Act II, Scene II
All pity choked with custom of fell deeds
Julius Cesar, Act 3 Scene 1, quoted by Jane Goodall, tears in her eyes, to Roger Fouts while leaving one of the US government-funded facilities that use chimps for research.
Powerful stuff, the prison of the mind and maltreatment of the weak.
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Seen on a forum:
We're going to be running out of a lot of stuff soon. I hope we evolve.
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"let slip today after i burnt my porridge while spreadsheeting"
One of us ;)
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"let slip today after i burnt my porridge while spreadsheeting"
One of us ;)
Sounds like a dickhead ;+}
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If You Lose, Don’t Lose The Lesson
- The Dali Lama (maybe)
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"Being early is the same as being wrong."
-unknown source, probably someone who said it too early.
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"Being early is the same as being wrong."
-unknown source, probably someone who said it too early.
Agreed, i was 24 hours early for a job interview once, i didn't get it.
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Ha!
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Ha ha. Being early is a prediction error based on pessimism. Being late is a prediction error based on optimism
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lol erg :)
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Culture eats strategy for breakfast.
- Peter Drucker
I hadn't heard of this one before, but it was was mentioned by Avisash Kaushik in a recent analytics newsletter. He drilled down in to the meaning of culture, with quotes like:
Culture us the way we do things around here.
which gets trumped by:
Culture is how your employees behave when no one is watching.
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It's easy to confuse what is with what ought to be, especially when what is has worked out in your favor.
The fictional Tyrion Lannister
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I would estimate the chances are about 49 percent that the world as we know it will collapse by about 2050.
Jared Diamond in NY Mag - http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/05/jared-diamond-on-his-new-book-upheaval.html
One interesting thing about this - the models have gotten better, many assumptions have been overturned or massively retuned, but it's still the same date that the Club of Rome chose in The Limits of Growth in 1972.
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As a father of four I do not like those odds.
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As a father of four I do not like those odds.
Did you read the continuation? He says:
I’ll be dead by then but my kids will be, what? Sixty-three years old in 2050. So this is a subject of much practical interest to me.
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>Did you read the continuation?
No, I've been sort of avoiding bad news the last few days.
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Be careful of the toes you step on today, they maybe connected to the a## you have to kiss tomorrow.
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"They say nothing is impossible, but I do nothing all the time."
-- Winnie the Pooh (in the trailer to the Christopher Robin movie)
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So many Pooh quotes are great.
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When everyone is screaming it is hard to hear a quiet voice.
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Spotted on Twitter:
"Formal education will earn you a living. Self-education will make you a fortune."
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Be aware of the difference between doing things in stages and doing them piecemeal.
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That reminds me of one of my favorite heuristics - "on purpose," as in "It looks like it was designed on purpose."
And ironically, I came here because I was frustrated trying to find something in an image library that was built piecemeal, with no rhyme or reason, rather than in stages. It's a momentary time savings for the people who file images randomly (as it appears to me anyway), but a colossal waste of time for everyone trying to find an image, including the original random filer.
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Power doesn't always corrupt. Power always reveals. When you have enough power to do what you always wanted to do, then you see what the guy always wanted to do.
Robert Caro
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I used to be a psychopath, now i'm in marketing ;+}
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"The moment you stop caring is the moment you start living."
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"The moment you stop caring is the moment you start living."
I've found it to be the opposite. Though not caring is a large component of inexperience, unless you're wired to not care, maybe not caring is what's needed as a youthful risk-taker, so it has its time and place. But ultimately you have to care, it's harder to care than it is to not care so it has more meaning.
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"When I die bury me face down so the whole world can kiss my a##." - unknown
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Spotted on Twitter:
"It's like Watergate but with morons"
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"It's like Watergate but with morons"
My grandmother always said that the cast of characters was unparalleled and considered Iran-Contra an utter disappointment in comparison. She made me sit down and watch John Dean testify (I had just turned 10) "because your president is a crook and what's happening is history. You'll be glad you saw this when it happened," and she was right (and she was also the only person in the extended family who voted against Nixon, contending that he was a crook, and crowed her I-told-you-sos incessantly to her husband and children).
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Edward Abbey and friends were traveling to LA when they heard a ranger talking about Havasu falls. In Desert Solitaire, Abbey write:
My friends said they would wait. So I went down to Havasu — fourteen miles by trail — and looked things over. When I returned five weeks later I discovered that the others had gone on to Los Angeles without me.
That's quoted in David Gessner's book "All the Wild that Remains: Edward Abbey, Wallace Stegner and the American West." It has another great Abbey quote, which of course dates from before we actually had cell phones, WWW and personal computers:
Never before in human history have slaves been so well fed, thoroughly medicated, lavishly entertained — but we are slaves nonetheless.
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Never before in human history have slaves been so well fed, thoroughly medicated, lavishly entertained — but we are slaves nonetheless.
Nice! Going to tweet it or something. :D
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Now, I for one intend to take random behavior more seriously because I
intend to become a good deal more ungovernable than I already am.
-- Utah Phillips.
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"I love coming to the The Core for my daily dose of sunshine and rainbows ;-)" - Ergophobe.
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:-)
We might all succumb to irrational exuberance otherwise ;-)
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"You don't have to be perfect but you have to be good enough to stay solvent." -- my favorite CEO
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"You don't have to be perfect but you have to be good enough to stay solvent." -- my favorite CEO
Marcel? I don't know the board structure in your family ;-)
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"a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes"
--said to be Mark Twain (but probably isn't)
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Man, the hunter, becomes the hunted. -Anonymous
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9 Women Can’t Make a Baby in a Month
- Mark Suster
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"Banks, government, and financial institutions are the original subscription service. AND WE CAN’T CANCEL THEM."
Redditor in COVID-19 thread
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Grow your own food. It's like printing your own money.
-Ron Finley
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2020:
The year everyone finally realized that not doing x, y, z was never due to their lack of time
But rather due to their lack of discipline
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Humankind is challenged, as it has never been challenged before, to prove its maturity and mastery -- not of nature, but of itself.
- Rachel Carson
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LM - if you have time for podcasts, you might enjoy Tim Ferriss' recent interview with Jane Goodall.
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Thanks for the recommendation.
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I started a stash that I keep in the garage now for just in case they eat all of their just in case food.
-- Jen (my wife)
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Just because I thought of it the other day. For many years, this was taped above my computer monitor. It is often cited, but out of context, as a John Muir quote, which it is, but as remembered by Sam Hall Young and quoted in his book about Muir. I give the section, with my beloved quote in bold.
For a bit broader context - After his adventure years wandering the Sierra Nevada as a young man, Muir married and took over his wife's family's farm. Being Muir, he worked 16-18 hours a day and was driving himself into poor health. His wife was starting to worry, as were friends. In the meantime, though, he amassed a reasonable amount of his savings, his wife finally prevailed. She told him his contribution to the world would be writing, speaking and organizing, not growing apples. The money he made in the fruit business gave him the platform to become the writer and organizer and happy person we know as John Muir. This was near the low ebb of that period.
A very brief visit at Muir's home near Martinez, California, in the spring of 1883 found him at what he frankly said was very distasteful work—managing a large fruit ranch. He was doing the work well and making his orchards pay large dividends; but his heart was in the hills and woods. Eagerly he questioned me of my travels and of the "progress" of the glaciers and woods of Alaska. Beyond a few short mountain trips he had seen nothing for two years of his beloved wilds.
Passionately he voiced his discontent: "I am losing the precious days. I am degenerating into a machine for making money. I am learning nothing in this trivial world of men. I must break away and get out into the mountains to learn the news."
It's one of my two favorite JM quotes.
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“If you’re the smartest person in the Zoom, you’re in the wrong Zoom.” -anonymous
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This one is mostly for Ergo:
"There is a considerable overlap between the intelligence of the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists." -Yosemite Park Ranger on why it's hard to design a bear-proof garbage can.
From here (https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/gk8t35/george_carlin_said_think_of_how_stupid_the/fqpz3yi/).
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This one is mostly for Ergo:
"There is a considerable overlap between the intelligence of the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists." -Yosemite Park Ranger on why it's hard to design a bear-proof garbage can.
From here (https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/gk8t35/george_carlin_said_think_of_how_stupid_the/fqpz3yi/).
When park rangers could be international diplomats.
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One of my favorites. Gets said a lot around here.
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Another of my favorite ranger quotes. Carl Sharsmith worked as a seasonal ranger for 64 years (he was a botany professor in the winter). He was still leading flower walks in his last year of life at 91 years old. When your work the visitor center desk, sometimes people will ask you, "If you had just one day to spend in Yosemite, what would you do?"
Sharsmith's answer was, "If I had only one day to spend in Yosemite, I would walk to the Merced River, put my face in my hands, and cry."
Much more so than the bear one, that one really did hit home for me. It's a beautiful response. I never dared to use it, though, because it's also a bit negative.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Sharsmith
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I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.
-- The Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear (Frank Herber, Dune)
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Leonardo Da Vinci: As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well used brings a happy death.
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"The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper." -Eden Phillpotts, (1862 - 1960)
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"You can't control the wind, but you can adjust your sails"
- an unsourced proverb
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"You can't control the wind, but you can adjust your sails"
I have a fav T shirt with that on :)
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"I was so lonely i started searching for friendship on Amazon Answers."
Me, by way of too many beers on no food.
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"I was so lonely i started searching for friendship on Amazon Answers."
But i found love in the end, all due to a £2.99 purchase of 12V, 1A DC jack barrels.
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"Nobody has ever eaten their way to becoming a Michelin Star chef. You have to actually cook." -David Perell on consuming information vs. proficiency
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I love that quote. I will use it the next time I find myself trying to explain that you can't read enough history books to make you a historian.
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“If falsehood, like truth, had but one face, we would be more on equal terms. For we would consider the contrary of what the liar said to be certain. But the opposite of truth has a hundred thousand faces and an infinite field.”
— Michel de Montaigne
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I was rereading Montaigne some this spring and early summer, so I recently read that, but didn't specially note it. In French, Montaigne is perhaps the most misquoted author, like Twain and Churchill in English. But this is a bona fide Montaigne quote. Essais, I, 9, "Des Menteurs,"
"Si, comme la vérité, le mensonge n'avoit qu'un visage, nous serions en meilleurs termes. Car nous prenderions pour certain l'opposé de ce que diroit le menteur. Mais le revers de la verité a cent mille figures et un champ indefiny."
https://artflsrv03.uchicago.edu/philologic4/montessaisvilley/navigate/1/3/10/
You can even see where Montaigne added it in his own handwriting for the second edition here:
https://artflsrv03.uchicago.edu/images/montaigne/0011v.jpg
See my attached image to help you find the spot.
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With all the debates about Confederate monuments and such, this quote from Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, written in 1978, comes to mind:
"People are always shouting they want to create a better future. It’s not true. The future is an apathetic void of no interest to anyone. The past is full of life, eager to irritate us, provoke and insult us, tempt us to destroy or repair it. The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past. They are fighting for access to the laboratories where photographs are retouched and biographies and histories are written."
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Frodo: I wish the Ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.
Gandalf: So do all who live to see such times; but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world, Frodo, besides the will of evil. Bilbo was meant to find the Ring. In which case, you were also meant to have it. And that is an encouraging thought.
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2050 is as close as 1990.
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I just reread 1984. Some quotes that might be germane to the present moment
In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was
inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely
the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality was tacitly denied by their philosophy.
In so far as he had time to remember it, he was not troubled by the fact that every word he murmured into the
speakwrite, every stroke of his ink pencil, was a deliberate lie. He was as anxious as anyone else in the
Department that the forgery should be perfect.
In Newspeak there is no word for “Science.” The empirical method of thought, on which all the scientific
achievements of the past were founded, is opposed to the most fundamental principles of Ingsoc.
Even the Catholic Church of the Middle Ages was tolerant by modern standards. Part of the reason for this was
that in the past no government had the power to keep its citizens under constant surveillance.
Being in a minority, even a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and
if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.
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Used today to justify my prices 8)
A great lathe operator commands several times the wages of an average lathe operator, but a great writer of software code is worth 10,000 times the price of an average software writer
Bill Gates
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A quote from 1933, that seems to have something to say about the big anti-trust suits recently filed...
"Private ownership of tools, a basis of freedom when tools are simple, becomes a basis of enslavement when tools are complex."
-- Upton Sinclair, "I, Governor of California and How I Ended Poverty. A True Story of the Future (1933)."
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I'm trying to wrap my head around that quote as applied to say smartphone technology.
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I haven't wrapped my head around it either. It seems super relevant, but I haven't worked out exactly how it fits in with today's technology. It hit home for me more as food for thought and reflection.
Thinking about it bit more after reading your comment...
I was thinking more in terms of Google, Facebook and Amazon than smartphones, but I could see that too. I feel like smartphones in and of themselves are tools, like hammers that can be used to break things or build things, but only become tools of enslavement when you load them up with apps and then it depends on the apps you load on them.
I see Google and Facebook as massive supercomputers with huge teams of engineers whose job is to keep you on their site and monetize you. So rather than a simple tool (1995 internet) that can free people (more information, more connection, more location independence, but to primitive to subject you to minute surveillance and sophisticated emotional manipulation), we have a complex tool that subjects users to intense surveillance and plays on our minds in ways most of us don't understand, not even the engineers who are building it.
They collect a huge amount of data and optimize for a handful of metrics that seem morally neutral (dwell time, engagement), but which function by playing on our worst impulses. We are seeing those impulses play out in ways that erode our democracy, erode the basic civility in our local communities, play on people's fears, encourage girls and young women to hate their bodies, wrap people in toxic virtual communities to alleviate their loneliness rather than promoting stronger physical communities or healthy virtual communities, all while pursuing apparently morally neutral metrics like dwell time or CTR.
So as these tools become complex, using massive data and algorithms that tease out of that data patterns that no human analyst could see, they become "tools of enslavement."
Something along those lines, but just felt rather than thought out as above, is why the quote hit home. I'm not sure the above is well-expressed and it certainly is incomplete and you could certainly marshal many counter-arguments, but some vague sense of the effects of the great power these data-driven, personalized advertising conglomerates (Google, Facebook) have is what made me say that quote hit home.
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No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.
Heraclitus
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"When stupidity is considered patriotism, it is unsafe to be intelligent." - Isaac Asimov
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“Because I’m old and have done other things.”
-- Mitt Romney after being asked in 2019 why he was behaving differently from other Republican senators
Another good line from Peter Beinart, the author of the article in which the Romney quote appears:
"Like most people, I’d prefer senators who do what I think is right. But I’d take comfort if more at least did what they think is right."
And the closing quote from the same article
“I should indeed like to please you; but I prefer to save you, whatever be your attitude toward me.”
-- Daniel Webster did to his constituents in Massachusetts
Why Are There So Few Courageous Senators?
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/15/opinion/senators-trump-impeachment-republicans.html
And it reminds me of an old saw in writing: "Every villain is the hero of her own story."
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Gerrymandering is like some kind of occult ritual that ends up summoning the most vile politicians
- a random redditor
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Spotted on Facebook:
Sometimes the best way to stay out of trouble is to take a nap.
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That's a very satisfying quote.
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Sometimes the best way to stay out of trouble is to take a nap.
I recently saw this: "Never waste time that could be spent sleeping." Frank Knight
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I can never find this quote when I want it (e.g. discussions of what tech is just around the corner)
The field of artificial intelligence was born in a fit of scientific optimism, in 1955, when a small group of researchers—three mathematicians and an I.B.M. programmer—drew up a proposal for a project at Dartmouth. “An attempt will be made to find how to make machines use language, form abstractions and concepts, solve kinds of problems now reserved for humans, and improve themselves,” they stated. “We think a significant advance can be made in one or more of these problems if a carefully selected group of scientists work on it together for a summer.”
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/23/doomsday-invention-artificial-intelligence-nick-bostrom
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"We in South Africa had a relatively peaceful transition. If our madness could end as it did, it must be possible to do the same everywhere else in the world."
-- Desmond Tutu speaking about Israel and Palestine
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Desmond_Tutu
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"We in South Africa had a relatively peaceful transition. If our madness could end as it did, it must be possible to do the same everywhere else in the world."
-- Desmond Tutu speaking about Israel and Palestine
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Desmond_Tutu
It never ended though, it's just changed names!
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Well, the quote is from 2002. He might be less optimistic now.
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2021/07/14/south-africas-war-for-the-rule-of-law
At the same time, SA did avoid something like the Rwanda or Cambodian genocides
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“Well, what the hell’s the presidency for?”
--- Lyndon Johnson
Thinking of this when thinking of what Trump and Biden could have done to better handle Covid. It's one of the great and rare moments of courage in the US presidency. Johnson thought he might lose the election over civil rights and people were telling him to go slow with the '64 election looming.
Caro writes that during a searching late-night conversation that lasted into the morning of November 27, when somebody tried to persuade Johnson not to waste his time or capital on the lost cause of civil rights, the president replied, “Well, what the hell’s the presidency for?”... He directed one labor leader to “talk to every human you could,” saying, “if we fail on this, then we fail in everything.”
Eventually Johnson corralled enough Republican votes to break the longest filibuster in the history of the House, won the election and moved on to pass the Voting Rights Act and escalate the war in Vietnam. In the end, it was the latter, that caused him to drop out of the 1968 race, but it was the former that helped formulate Nixon's Southern Strategy that gave him the White House.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/04/what-the-hells-the-presidency-for/358630/
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"A sure sign that you have created God in your own image is when he hates all the same people you do."
-- a Jesuit priest friend of Anne Lamott mentioned in her book Bird by Bird
I'm reminded of it due to coverage lately of certain Americans who profess themselves happy to see US athletes lose at the Olympics (I've always been uncomfortable by the jingoism of the Olympics, but I don't recall anti-nationalism in the past... maybe I just have a bad memory).
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"Remember hobbies? Hobbies is what we use to do before we had phones."
-a guy on the internet
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I thought it was... what did we call those things? They were big hunks of dried tree pulp with black marks all over the leaves inside. I think I still have some in the basement, but I don't use them anymore because I don't seem to have any charger cords for them anymore.
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>>what did we call those things
B.O.O.K. = Body Of Organized Knowledge
>> don't seem to have any charger cords
You might be able to use them anyhow. The earliest B.O.O.K. models did not need charger cords because they were powered by ambient light.
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>>powered by ambient light.
Confirmed. I turn off the light on the nightstand and that turns off the reading device. Very strange UI decision.
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Spotted on a forum:
"If random people walking through a crowded place can tell you are a prepper you aren’t doing it correctly."
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We never have the money to do it right but somehow always have the money to do it twice. --/r/ProgrammerHumor
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Related:
"If you don't take the time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?"
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Related:
Schedule your equipment maintenance or it will schedule it for you. --/r/Skookum
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Sort of reminds me of:
"A lazy man does twice the work"
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Those are all great quotes for an article on technical debt.
There is an alternative: "Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly."
Think about it. It is often true as well.
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Your eyes will not see what your mind does not know.
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"You need to remember your Buddha nature and your social security number." -- Ram Dass, as quoted by Jack Kornfield (author of the wonderfully titled but somewhat repetitive book, "After the Ecstasy, the Laundry").
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The Stone Age didn't end for lack of stone, and the oil age will end long before the world runs out of oil.
These words have been credited to Ahmed Zaki Yamani who was the Minister of Oil for Saudi Arabia for more than twenty years.
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"A Web of links is a vital tool when it comes to breaking chains."
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"It’s not that they’re religious, it’s that they’re assholes"
https://www.halifaxexaminer.ca/featured/the-amherst-baptist-camp-meeting-covid-outbreak-its-not-that-theyre-religious-its-that-theyre-assholes/
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"If you're not taking flack, you're not over the target."
Also this borderline dada (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dada) movie line from Samuel Jackson in The Hitman's Bodyguard: "When life serves you sh##, you make Kool-Aid."
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The Medium is the Message thread prompts me to post this one too. This is something I think about a lot when I think of how Instagram has changed the way travelers interact with the world when they travel.
"Moreover, the photograph has reversed the purpose of travel, which until now had been to encounter the strange and unfamiliar."
--- Marshal MacLuhan, Understanding Media (1964).
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A couple more MacLuhan quotes stolen from https://slideplayer.com/slide/6182102/
"As A. J. Liebling remarked in his book, The Press, a man is not free if he cannot see where he is going, even if he has a gun to help him get there."
"Specialist technologies detribalize. The nonspecialist electric technology retribalizes."
(thinking of the pre-web internet as a specialized tool that helped scholars share data across boundaries, vs Web 2.0 that helped conspiracy theorists within tribes)
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With age comes confidence in your world view regardless of accuracy. --u/Tudpool
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This has a bit of a setup, but I love the quote at the end. From The Overstory, by Richard Powers:
His wife Charlotte, scion of a fallen southern planting family that once sent missionaries to China, tells him, "There's a Chinese saying. 'When is the best time to plant a tree? Twenty years ago?'"
The Chinese engineer smiles. "Good one."
"'When is the second best time to plant a tree? Now.'"
"Ah! Okay!" The smile turns real. Until today, he has never planted anything. But Now, that next best of times, is long and rewrites everything.
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'What does not kill you, mutates and try's again' - unknown
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Seen on a forum:
If you’re not on a government watch list by now you should ashamed of yourself.
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On the lighter side ... lifted from FB :
1. When one door closes and another door opens, you are probably in prison.
2. To me, "drink responsibly" means don't spill it.
3. Age 60 might be the new 40, but 9:00 pm is the new midnight.
4. It's the start of a brand new day, and I'm off like a herd of turtles.
5. The older I get, the earlier it gets late.
6. When I say, "The other day," I could be referring to any time between yesterday and 15 years ago.
7. I remember being able to get up without making sound effects.
8. I had my patience tested. I'm negative.
9. Remember, if you lose a sock in the dryer, it comes back as a Tupperware lid that doesn't fit any of your containers.
10. If you're sitting in public and a stranger takes the seat next to you, just stare straight ahead and say, "Did you bring the money?"
11. When you ask me what I am doing today, and I say "nothing," it does not mean I am free. It means I am doing nothing.
12. I finally got eight hours of sleep. It took me three days, but whatever.
13. I run like the winded.
14. I hate when a couple argues in public, and I missed the beginning and don't know whose side I'm on.
15. When someone asks what I did over the weekend, I squint and ask, "Why, what did you hear?"
16. When you do squats, are your knees supposed to sound like a goat chewing on an aluminum can stuffed with celery?
17. I don't mean to interrupt people. I just randomly remember things and get really excited.
18. When I ask for directions, please don't use words like "east."
19. Don't bother walking a mile in my shoes. That would be boring. Spend 30 seconds in my head. That'll freak you right out.
20. Sometimes, someone unexpected comes into your life out of nowhere, makes your heart race, and changes you forever. We call those people cops.
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Theresa and I both got some laughs out of that, especially #11, which I feel deeply. But #3 and #5 remind me of Edna Saint-Vincent Millay's poem Grown-Up
Was it for this I uttered prayers,
And sobbed and cursed and kicked the stairs,
That now, domestic as a plate,
I should retire at half-past eight?
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It is easier to write code than to read it. --/r
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On a forum:
I am not affraid of robots and AI.
I am affraid of robots and AI in the hands of evil people.
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Similar to a quote I heard from a climate scientist: "I'm not afraid of what climate change will do to humans. I am afraid of what humans will do to humans as a result of climate change."
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"Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point."
-- CS Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (1942) ch. 29
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Patience is not the ability to wait, but the ability to keep a good attitude while waiting.
-- a meme on Facebook
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"When I was a slave I tried praying for three years. I prayed that God would emancipate me, but it was not till I prayed with my legs that I was emancipated."
-- Frederick Douglas, 1876.
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2021/11/23/pray-legs/
"It is said that on the night he died, Victor Hugo wrote in his diary, substantially this sentiment: Stronger than all the armies is an idea whose time has come."
-- Everett Dirksen in his 1964 speech on the Senate floor asking for cloture on the Civil Rights Act, a speech that was essential to passing that Act, bringing in 27 Republican votes to help Lyndon Johnson counteract the Southern Democrats who were tooth and nail opposed to the legislation
https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/resources/pdf/DirksenCivilRights.pdf
The actual Hugo quote is much less moving and is not from his diary. It is from "Histoire d'un crime," an account of the coup attempt of Louis Bonaparte where he says, simply, "On résiste à l'invasion des armées; on ne résiste pas à l'invasion des idées." ("You can resist the invasion of armies; you cannot resist the invasion of ideas," speaking specifically of the ideas of the French Revolution and the still existing monarchical rule of most of Europe).
"https://www.google.com/books/edition/Histoire_d_un_crime_d%C3%A9position_d_un_t%C3%A9/sg_LUe0qqZoC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=inauthor%3A%22Victor%20Hugo%22%20intitle%3A%22histoire%22&pg=PA331&printsec=frontcover
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Car manuals in the 1960s told you how to adjust valve clearances, now they tell you not to drink the battery fluid.
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If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about the answers.
— Thomas Pynchon in Gravity’s Rainbow
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I feel like this sums up American politics accurately.
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Warning: politics (sort of)
"You only get two choices in our system, so we chose the red team. The quick version is that partisan politics prevented us from achieving the thing that motivated us to get involved in politics in the first place — helping people by removing barriers. I was slow to react to this fact, letting us head down the wrong road for the better part of a decade. Boy, did we screw up. What a mess!"
-- Charles Koch
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If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about the answers.
— Thomas Pynchon in Gravity’s Rainbow
Reminds me of the classic bit "The Front Fell Off"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm_JqM
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>>Front Fell Off
Funny!
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"I spent half my money on whiskey and women. The other half I wasted," --(?)Burt Reynolds, '100 Rifles'
h/tip ergophobe
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I use versions of that all the time.
I spent half my life wandering around lost in the mountains....
I spent half my life with my nose buried in books...
I spent half my life reading articles posted by rcjordan...
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“The grass is always greener on the side that’s fertilized with bullshit.”
— unknown
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A few quotes from a recent poetry binge.
Be joyful though you have considered all the facts.
-- Wendell Berry, "Manifesto: the Mad Farmer Liberation Front." https://www.poetry-chaikhana.com/Poets/B/BerryWendell/ManifestoMad/index.html
The poem that quote is from is worth a read in its entirety. First published in 1973, it has the prescient line: "When they want you to buy something, they will call you."
I am done with apologies. If contrariness is my
inheritance and destiny, so be it. If it is my mission
to go in at exits and come out at entrances, so be it.
I have planted by the stars in defiance of the experts,
and tilled somewhat by incantation and by singing,
and reaped, as I knew, by luck and Heaven’s favor,
in spite of the best advice.
-- Wendell Berry, "The Contrariness of the Mad Farmer."
https://onbeing.org/poetry/the-contrariness-of-the-mad-farmer/
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you, you are surely lost.
-- David Wagoner, "Lost" https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=31967
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
-- Mary Oliver, The Summer Day
https://www.loc.gov/programs/poetry-and-literature/poet-laureate/poet-laureate-projects/poetry-180/all-poems/item/poetry-180-133/the-summer-day/
That last one is super famous and oft-quoted. In general, though, I am not a fan of Mary Oliver except her poem Wild Geese.
My favorite poet, bar none, is Marie Howe, but her poems read better in full. I won't try to quote them. I will only recommend two.
"The Affliction"
https://poets.org/poem/affliction
"What the Living Do" (I used to have this one memorized; it is a poem about/to her brother who died of AIDS)
https://poets.org/poem/what-living-do
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Just spotted on Twitter:
"Unlimited self-confidence is not an adequate substitute for knowledge."
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Well, sh##. I guess I better work on a better balance there.
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"Well, sh##. I guess I better work on a better balance there."
-- Drastic on The Core
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"You got to lose to know how to win"
-- Aerosmith, 'Dream On'
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How about a quote that missed the mark?
"No two countries with McDonald's within their borders have ever been in a war since having a McDonald's"
-- Thomas Friedman
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"I myself was to experience how easily one is taken in by a lying and censored press and radio in a totalitarian state. Though unlike most Germans I had daily access to foreign newspapers, especially those of London, Paris and Zurich, which arrived the day after publication, and though I listened regularly to the BBC and other foreign broadcasts, my job necessitated the spending of many hours a day in combing the German press, checking the German radio, conferring with Nazi officials and going to party meetings. It was surprising and sometimes consternating to find that notwithstanding the opportunities I had to learn the facts and despite one’s inherent distrust of what one learned from Nazi sources, a steady diet over the years of falsifications and distortions made a certain impression on one’s mind and often misled it. No one who has not lived for years in a totalitarian land can possibly conceive how difficult it is to escape the dread consequences of a regime’s calculated and incessant propaganda."
William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (location 6057 in the Kindle version)
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How about a quote that missed the mark?
How about another one, from the Treaty of Tripoli (Treaty of Peace and Friendship between the United States of America and the Bey and Subjects of Tripoli of Barbary), ratified unanimously by the US Senate in 1797:
Art. 11. As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen; and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.
Four years later, the US was at war with four North African states ("to the shores of Tripoli/We will fight our nation's battles"). The reasons for that war were, indeed, not based on a pretext arising from religious opinions. I was thinking of more recent history there.
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Spotted on Twitter just now:
"“Instead of arguing with facts and logic, use a thought-terminating cliche.”
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Politicians, most of whom have no medical training, are all too eager to inject themselves into matters of healthcare, particularly when it fills a partisan purpose.
From an editorial in the Dothan Eagle, dated Nov 13, 2021.
https://dothaneagle.com/opinion/editorial/the-medically-illiterate/article_c5c4de7a-43fe-11ec-be2f-773d81f1f7e5.html
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Although, I would not say that the politicians with medical training who serve in the US Congress have a particularly laudatory track record on medical issues either. Partisanship always seems to take precedence, at least for high-profile, hot-button issues (vaccines, insurance, etc)
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"The pandemic was the bomb cyclone of our discontents"
Opinion | It’s Time to Stop Living the American Scam - The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/07/opinion/work-busy-trap-millennials.html
A good read.
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There are a lot of quotable lines in that article.
Excerpts with paywall-busting link to original here
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/7/7/2108942/--It-s-Time-to-Stop-Living-the-American-Scam
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Spotted on Twitter, in a discussion about Thomas Jefferson owing slaves:
"I believe one of the biggest problems is how we deify the founders and many other historical figures. If we just chose our words properly and used words like “influential” instead of “great” it would go a long way. We just need to stop using words that convey goodness or morality"
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I was just listening to Ta-Nahesi Coates talking about Jefferson and he said much the same. He basically said we should not be putting Robert E Lee or Thomas Jefferson or Frederick Douglas or anyone at all up on pedestals (literally), because it always leads to distortions and pedestals are designed to create myth and tradition, not history and understanding.
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"Remember, US cities weren’t built for cars, they were demolished for cars."
Source: https://twitter.com/paultalkscities/status/1547323027976818688?s=20&t=npl6WR7aXXTXWGF5en11_Q
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"The Socialist who finds his children playing with soldiers is usually upset, but he is never able to think of a substitute for the tin soldiers; tin pacifists somehow won’t do."
-- from George Orwell's 1940 review of Mein Kampf. - https://bookmarks.reviews/george-orwells-1940-review-of-mein-kampf/
Interesting read.
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"I know there are people who’d prefer to be relaxing on a Caribbean beach, instead of getting drenched while trudging through gorse bushes under a glowering sky; but I’m not going to pretend I understand them."
- Oliver Burkeman
"People complain that they no longer have “time to read,” but the reality, as the novelist Tim Parks has pointed out, is rarely that they literally can’t locate an empty half hour in the course of the day. What they mean is that when they do find a morsel of time, and use it to try to read, they find they’re too impatient to give themselves over to the task. “It is not simply that one is interrupted,” writes Parks. “It is that one is actually inclined to interruption.” It’s not so much that we’re too busy, or too distractible, but that we’re unwilling to accept the truth that reading is the sort of activity that largely operates according to its own schedule. You can’t hurry it very much before the experience begins to lose its meaning."
- Oliver Burkeman
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Spotted on Twitter:
"If people working full-time jobs still need food stamps to get by, they're not the ones leeching off the government. Their employers are."
https://twitter.com/mhdksafa/status/1579686751286984705
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"If you can't tell what you desperately need, it's probably sleep." -Kevin Kelly
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"If you're not preparing for hard times you are preparing for hard times."
Sgt. Kickaxe on Webmaster World
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“The last mile is the least crowded.”
Mentioned as “the old saying” in James Clear, Atomic Habits (which generally I do not recommend… lots of fluff that could mostly be a two-page article).
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Violets are blue,
Roses are red.
Less than a week till
your flowers are dead.
Buy jewelry instead!
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>Buy jewelry instead!
I am sure it is very variable, but most of the jewelry I buy just ends up living in a box in a drawer somewhere. Flowers are definitely temporary, but for that week or so they are center stage.
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My wife asked for, and received, a very high-quality sleeping bag in lieu of an engagement ring. 26 years later, that sleeping bag is still a frequent companion on colder-weather adventures. Every time she sleeps in it she reminds me how glad she is she has that instead of a ring.
One of the rare times she has gone jewelry shopping was with Buckworks and she was quite happy with that experience too, though more for the quality of the company and than the quality of the jewelry.
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Maybe people who meditate for an hour per day are happier because they live a life that affords them an hour per day to meditate. -- /r @ginnyhogan_
True dat!
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"98.4% of all conversations about the block chain are non-consensual"
-- Cory Doctorow on The Verge with Nilay Patel
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"A general reminder whenever budget issues are discussed: the U.S. government is — this isn’t original — best thought of as a giant insurance company with an army. When you talk about federal spending, you’re overwhelmingly talking about Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and defense."
- Paul Krugman
https://archive.nytimes.com/krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/27/an-insurance-company-with-an-army/
I wonder who coined the original
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"Which is more important," asked Big Panda, "the journey or the destination?"
"The company," said Tiny Dragon
James Norbury
https://www.jamesnorbury.com/big-panda-tiny-dragon
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"Confidence in CS’s investment bank is widely considered to be shot, optimism about the three-year turnround is fragile, deposit bleed has yet to be stanched, and the wealth management division is losing money, which is the finance equivalent of jumping off a boat and missing the water.
https://www.ft.com/content/5a99e2c3-6e40-4c58-896a-2c573048099e
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Don't worry what people think. They don't do it very often.
-
"Genocide never starts with death camps. It starts with rhetoric..." -/r
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Advice from An Old Farmer (Facebook)
Your fences need to be horse-high, pig-tight and bull-strong.
Keep skunks and bankers at a distance.
Life is simpler when you plow around the stump.
A bumble bee is considerably faster than a John Deere tractor.
Words that soak into your ears are whispered… not yelled.
Meanness don’t jes’ happen overnight.
Forgive your enemies; it messes up their heads.
Do not corner something that you know is meaner than you.
It don’t take a very big person to carry a grudge.
You cannot unsay a cruel word.
Every path has a few puddles.
When you wallow with pigs, expect to get dirty.
The best sermons are lived, not preached.
Most of the stuff people worry about ain’t never gonna happen anyway.
Don’t judge folks by their relatives.
Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.
Live a good, honorable life… Then when you get older and think back, you’ll enjoy it a second time.
Don ‘t interfere with somethin’ that ain’t bothering you none.
Timing has a lot to do with the outcome of a Rain dance.
If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop diggin’.
Sometimes you get, and sometimes you get got.
The biggest troublemaker you’ll probably ever have to deal with, watches you from the mirror every mornin’.
Always drink upstream from the herd.
Good judgment comes from experience, and a lotta that comes from bad judgment.
Lettin’ the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier than puttin’ it back in.
If you get to thinkin’ you’re a person of some influence, try orderin’ somebody else’s dog around..
Live simply. Love generously. Care deeply. Speak kindly. Leave the rest to God.
Don’t pick a fight with an old man. If he is too old to fight, he’ll just kill you.
Most times, it just gets down to common sense.
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"Nothing lasts longer than a temporary solution."
This pipe join must have been there, doing its job, for years. It just failed. : redneckengineering
https://old.reddit.com/r/redneckengineering/comments/15mhi5b/this_pipe_join_must_have_been_there_doing_its_job/
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"If we all chip in, we can defeat socialism!" -/r
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“Modern loneliness often masks itself as hyper-connectivity. That’s the thing. You can have a thousand virtual friends and nobody to come and feed your cat.”
Esther Perrel on Your Undivided Attention (23:29)
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Spotted on Twitter:
"The cost of procrastination is the life you could have lived."
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Never do anything you wouldn't want to explain to the paramedics. -- Guelph fire department
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I study war and diplomacy, so that my son may study trade and commerce, so that his son may study art and music. --John Adams
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That's an interesting one considering who said it and when it was said.
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It’s also interesting considering
This morning, I discovered an interesting statistic, “America Has Been At War 93% of the Time – 222 Out of 239 Years – Since 1776“, i.e. the U.S. has only been at peace for less than 20 years total since its birth
BTW, it’s not that much different for France.
https://freakonometrics.hypotheses.org/50473
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>222 years
...need more potatoes;
"the introduction of potatoes helped reduce conflict in Europe for a minimum for 200 years." • Earth.com
https://www.earth.com/news/potatoes-keep-peace-europe/
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"I am very intelligent and very devoted to my work in the camps. I struck at least two prisoners every day.”
— Wanda Klaff at her trial for crimes against humanity committed at the Stutthoff concentration camp, for which she was executed in 1946 at the age of 24.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanda_Klaff
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"If we elect clowns, we get a circus." -Rahna Epting
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Here is a bunch that fit together nicely. That discussion of getting older, retire or not some re old so to many uses of "he":
No matter how far advanced you are in years, you’ll never be as young as you are right now.
“After thirty a man wakes up sad every morning.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson
“No snow falls lighter than the snow of age; but none lies heavier, for it never melts.” —L.N. Child
“When we are young, we are slavishly employed in procuring something whereby we may live comfortably when we grow old; and when we are old, we perceive it is too late to live as we proposed.” —Alexander Pope
“Every one desires to live long, but no one would be old.” —Jonathan Swift
“Nothing is more disgraceful than that an old man should have nothing to show to prove that he has lived long, except his years.” —Seneca
“A person is always startled when he hears himself seriously called old for the first time.” —O. W. Holmes
“Age that lessens the enjoyment of life, increases our desire of living.” —Oliver Goldsmith
“Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success.” —Francis Bacon
“Without fullness of experience, length of days is nothing. When fullness of life has been achieved, shortness of days is nothing. That is perhaps why the young . . . have usually so little fear of death; they live by intensities that the elderly have forgotten.” —Lewis Mumford
“As we advance in life, the circle of our pains enlarges, while that of our pleasures contracts.” —Sophie Swetchine
“Old age adds to the respect due to virtue, but it takes nothing from the contempt inspired by vice; it whitens only the hair.” —J. P. Senn
“Old age is a tyrant, which forbids the pleasures of youth on pain of death.” —François de La Rochefoucauld
“Forty is the old age of youth; fifty is the youth of old age.” —Victor Hugo
“How many fancy they have experience simply because they have grown old.” —Stanislaus
“Childhood sometimes does pay a second visit to a man; youth never.” —Anna Jameson
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Feeling your age, Rupert?
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60 in March! too much talk of retirement :)
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“Remember, amateurs built the Ark. Professionals built the Titanic.”
— Alastair Humphreys on going for it even if you’re not really ready (though I assume the quote itself is rather old)
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One of my all-time favorites that I had occasion to think of today…
“There's a time to think, and a time to act. And this, gentlemen, is no time to think.”
— John Candy as Sheriff Bud Boomer in Canadian Bacon.
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“People don’t want accuracy, they want certainty.”
Morgan Housel
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Much of athletic success comes down to overcoming the hubris of youth while we still have enough physical youth left to make use of it.
-- Alan Couzens, Dec 31, 2023 - https://x.com/Alan_Couzens/status/1741492237828002035?s=20
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"Apple's most valuable intangible asset isn't its patents or copyrights – it's an army of people who believe that using products from a $2.89 trillion multinational makes them members of an oppressed religious minority whose identity is coterminal with the interests of Apple's shareholders."
-- Cory Doctorow
https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/12/youre-holding-it-wrong/
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"Some people learn by reading, others by observation. The rest have to p##s on the electric fence for themselves." -deleted (reddit)
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The ability to learn from the mistakes of others is a big part of what's separated us from monkeys, but i feel like I've known several electric fence pissers over the years.